Thursday, May 23, 2013

HYPNOSIS TO QUIT SMOKING

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There is no shortage of hypnotists advertising their services to quit smoking. If you google hypnosis to quit smoking or even open your local newspaper you will be inundated with the number of people offering to help you stop your smoking habit with a quick 1 hour session.

During my many quit smoking attempts I visited several hypnotists and spent quite a bit of money doing it. The idea of quitting smoking by hypnosis has some merit. Hypnosis is used to speak to your unconscious mind. The part of your mind that keeps telling you it needs a cigarette and eventually wins out.

Think about it, your conscious mind knows that smoking is bad for your health, causes you to have shortness of breath, hacking coughs, yellow teeth, bad breath, increases your risk of many cancers, and costs you a lot of money. If you were only listening to your conscious mind, you would have no troubles putting down those cigarettes and quitting smoking forever. But you have this constant internal battle with your unconscious mind that keeps telling you that you need a cigarette and if you smoke a cigarette you will feel better. Eventually you cave in and you are back to your pack a day habit. Sound familiar?

My attempts at quitting smoking with hypnotism never resulted in success. The best I did was quit for about 24 hours mainly because I had shelled out $300 and I was determined not to let that money go to waste. The gentleman I visited gave me a one on one session that lasted about 45 minutes. When I walked out the door the only thing I could think about was smoking a cigarette.

My next attempt was in a group session that again lasted about an hour and after the session the hypnotist sold me a bunch of vitamins that were quite expensive and were designed to help relieve the physical withdrawal symptoms of quitting smoking. His session was supposed to take care of the mental withdrawal and thus the physical would be handled by these vitamins. Short story is I made it 2 days and reverted right back to my old habits.

One thing every quit smoking hypnotist has in common is the guarantee. Guaranteed to work or you can come back an get hypnotized as many times as you want. I'd love to see a hypnotist advertise that they will give you your money back if you don't quit smoking. Then I would have much more faith in quitting smoking by hypnosis.

I do have several friends who visited hypnotists and quit smoking. And they quit smoking for good, so I know that for some people this method can work. And it makes sense, if you can convince your subconscious that it does not want or need a cigarette then you are basically home free. Without that part of your mind nagging at you to smoke, you won't want to reach for a cigarette.

In many ways, my attempts to help you smoking are the same as hypnosis. I am trying to teach you that you don't need or really even want to smoke. You do not enjoy smoking and if you realize that you will realize that you only smoke because your body and mind are addicted to nicotine. If you stop ingesting nicotine and amazing thing happens, you no longer crave nicotine. And your body and mind adjust back to normal, so smoking will not be pleasurable. The challenge is to get you to stop for a few days or weeks so you too realize that you don't need cigarettes.

If you have tried every avenue to quit smoking, if you have read my postings on this site and still are not convinced that you don't enjoy smoking, don't need cigarettes and are better off without them, then I would not discourage you from visiting a hypnotist to quit smoking.

For those of you who have quit smoking by use of hypnosis, or those that attempt, I would love to hear back from you on the specifics and your success.